Commercial Whaling

The Problem

  • Many species and populations of whales exist at fractions of their former levels. The gray whale has been extinct in the Atlantic for several hundred years, and is on the verge of extirpation in the western North Pacific. Right whales have almost disappeared from the eastern North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific and their extinction in these regions may be inevitable. About 350 right whales remain in the population off the Canada/U.S. east coast.  All five populations of bowhead whales are much reduced from historical abundance; the three North Atlantic populations are at critically low levels and are considered among the most endangered of the great whales.

  • Although estimating present and former population levels is extremely difficult, it has been suggested that, for example, blue whales globally number approximately four per cent of their pre-exploitation level.  Pre-whaling numbers of sperm whales have been estimated at 1,100,000 animals; by 1999 – ten years after the cessation of large-scale hunting – numbers were estimated at one-third the historical level. 

  • Some whale populations, however, have responded to decades of protection - for example, the southern right whale and the western Arctic population of bowhead whales.   

The Causes

  • Such declines have been caused almost entirely by commercial whaling. Commercial whaling has existed, at various levels and in different parts of the world since at least the eleventh century, when the Basques hunted right whales in the Bay of Biscay.

  • By far the greatest number of whales have been killed this century, following the development of "factory" ships, which allowed fleets to hunt whales for months at a time, killing and processing them at sea. At its peak, in the 1950s and 1960s, the global whaling industry was killing in excess of 50,000 whales a year, with predictable consequences.  It has been estimated that in the Antarctic alone, more than 2,000,000 whales were killed by commercial whalers during the twentieth century.

  • Commercial whaling continues at reduced levels, despite a moratorium established under the auspices of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In the North Pacific and Antarctic, Japan is hunting several species of whales, for what they claim is "scientific research.” In recent years, its self-assigned Antarctic quota has risen from 330 minke whales, to 440 minke whales, to its present level: 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales, and 50 humpback whales a year. In the Northeast Atlantic, Norway assigns itself a quota in excess of 1,000 minkes annually, under objection to the IWC moratorium. In 2006, Iceland resumed commercial whaling under a post-dated reservation to the moratorium; it also conducts “scientific” whaling.

  • There is some concern that unregulated, "pirate" whaling may be continuing around the world. DNA testing of whale meat in Japan suggests that at least some meat on sale is from species which are protected by the IWC. In the past, fleets from the former Soviet Union killed thousands of protected whales, and vastly exceeded their quota for other species, contributing to those species' extremely low levels today.
  • Related to this, there are increasing concerns about the high levels of reported bycatch of several large cetacean species in Japanese waters, particularly given that the meat from these whales is then frequently marketed. 

  • In the past, whale products have been used for clothing, soap, petroleum, gunpowder, lamp oil and cosmetics. The only modern market is for meat, primarily in Japan but also in Norway.  Whale meat, however, is considered potentially dangerous for human consumption due to its high levels of mercury, DDT, and PCBs.      

The Context

  • In 1982, the International Whaling Commission voted for an indefinite moratorium on    commercial whaling, to come into effect in the 1986 coastal and 1985/86 Antarctic whaling seasons. In 1994, it adopted the circumpolar Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, in which whales will theoretically be protected from commercial whaling even if the moratorium is overturned.

  • Although the moratorium is frequently referred to as a whaling ban, it is in fact a suspension, until such time as the Commission develops a more robust and conservative management procedure.

  • A so-called Revised Management Procedure (RMP) has been developed for calculating catch limits for commercial whaling of baleen whales. It is far more conservative than previous management procedures, and was largely adopted in principle by the IWC in 1994. However, the RMP is one part of a broader Revised Management Scheme (RMS), which includes such components as an international observer scheme, and rules and procedures for conducting whale surveys. These elements are still being negotiated by the IWC.

  • Some environmental groups argue that the present situation - in which whaling is technically illegal but is continuing outside of the IWC's authority - is untenable. For that reason, they argue that adoption of a strict RMS which permits only limited commercial whaling is preferable and likely to reduce the number of whales being killed. Other groups reject this argument and insist that no commercial whaling can be allowed.

  • For several years beginning in 1997 the IWC discussed a proposed compromise that would have maintained a ban on commercial whaling in the high seas, banned international trade in whale meat and phased out scientific whaling, and allowed coastal whaling only under the strict conditions imposed by the RMP and RMS. The proposal ended in deadlock but with concerns growing over the polarization of the IWC between whaling and non-whaling countries, talk of a similar deal has begun to resurface.

  • Japan in particular has recently been arguing that whales may need to be "culled" because they compete with fisheries. Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) claims that cetaceans consume between 2.8 and 5 hundred million tons of food each year - food that, it argues, might otherwise be available to the commercial fishing industry.  Critics of this argument point out that, even if the ICR's figures are correct, much of the food consumed by whales is krill or, in the case of sperm whales, deep-sea squid, for which there is no commercial fishery; that the complexities of marine ecosystems are such that culling predators need not necessarily result in an increase in their prey; and that most whale populations are anyway already massively depleted and thus already eating far fewer fish than one hundred or even fifty years ago.

  • Environmentalists have long accused Japan of "buying" votes in the IWC, by encouraging less developed nations to join the Commission and vote with Japan in exchange for fisheries and other development aid.

  • One of the difficulties confronting those on all sides of the issue is that little remains known about many cetacean populations. For example, it has recently been recognized that there are two, or perhaps, three species of minke whales, all of which are divided into discrete populations.  In 2000, the IWC Scientific Committee acknowledged that it does not even have an approximate estimate for minke numbers in the Southern Ocean, and that there may be far fewer than previously believed.

  • There is dispute over the extent to which whale meat remains an important element of the diet and society of those countries which still hunt whales commercially. The Japanese government denies claims that stockpiles of whale meat demonstrate a dwindling interest in eating whale meat, even though opinion polls suggest younger generations rarely if ever eat it. In 2006, the Norwegian government twice suspended whaling operations because buyers stopped purchasing the meat; the whaling fleet ended up catching just 546 out of a quota of 1,052 whales.

  • Even on populations where there is no longer any commercial whaling, other environmental pressures are hindering possible recovery. Right whales in the western North Atlantic, for example, are killed by ship strikes or by entanglement in fishing nets. Other concerns expressed over various populations include:  disturbance as a result of coastal development or from offshore oil and gas exploration and extraction; environmental pollutants; and the impact of increased UV-B radiation - as a result of zone layer depletion - on levels of plankton, on which many whales feed. A growing number of studies suggest that diminished Antarctic sea ice as a result of rising temperatures is negatively impacting krill numbers in the region, with possible consequences for the marine wildlife which feeds on krill, including whales.   

Further Reading

Baker, C.S., Lukoschek, V., Lavery, S., Dalebout, M.L., Yong-un, M., Endo, T., and Funahashi, N.  2006.  Incomplete reporting of whale, dolphin and porpoise 'bycatch' revealed by molecular    monitoring of Korean markets.  Animal Conservation 9(4): 474-482.

Clapham, P.J., Childerhouse, S., Gales, N.J., Rojas-Bracho, L., Tillman, M.F. and Brownell, R.L.  2007.  The whaling issue: Conservation, confusion, and casuistry.  Marine Policy 31(3): 314-319.

Currie, D.  2007.  Whales, sustainability and international environmental governance.  Review of  European Community and International Environmental Law 16(1): 45-57.

Estes, J.A., Demaster, D.P.,  Doak, D.F., Williams, T.M. and Brownell, R.L. (eds.)  2006.  Whales, Whaling and Ocean Ecosystems.  University of California Press, Berkeley.  xvi + 402 pp.

Holt, S.J.  The tortuous history of ''scientific'' Japanese whaling.  BioScience 53(3): 204-206, 2003.   

IWC website: http://www.iwcoffice.org/index.htm.

Kasuya, T.  2007.  Japanese whaling and other cetacean fisheries.  Environmental Science and Pollution Research 14(1): 39-48.

Miller, A.R. and Dolsak, N.  2007.  Issue linkages in international environmental policy : the    International Whaling Commission and Japanese development aid.  Global Environmental    Politics 7(1): 69-96, 2007.

Morell, V.  2007.  Killing whales for science?  Science 316(5824): 532-534.

Parsons, E.C.M., Rose, N.A., Bass, C., Perry, C. and Simmonds, M.P.  2006.  It's not just poor    science - Japan's ''scientific'' whaling may be a human health risk too.  Marine Pollution Bulletin 52(9): 1118-1120.